Part 12 (2/2)
I know that it is not for daughters to defend the truth, though, unfortunately, one might say that since the bishops have the courage of daughters, the daughters must have the courage of bishops; but, if it is not for us to defend the truth, it is for us to die for the truth and to suffer everything rather than abandon it.”
She subscribed, ”divided between her instinctive repugnance and her desire to show herself an humble daughter of the Catholic Church.”
She said: ”It is all we can concede; for the rest, come what may,--poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death,--all those seem to me nothing in comparison with the anguish in which I should pa.s.s the remainder of my life, if I had been wretch enough to make a covenant with death on the occasion of so excellent an opportunity for proving to G.o.d the sincerity of the vows of fidelity which our lips have p.r.o.nounced.” According to Mme. Perier, the health of the writer of the above epistle was so undermined by the shock which all that commotion had caused her, that she became dangerously ill, dying soon after.
Thus was sacrificed the first victim of the formulary.
Cousin says that few women of the seventeenth century were as brilliantly endowed as Jacqueline Pascal; possessing the finesse, energy, and sobriety of her brother, she was capable of the most serious work, and yet knew perfectly how to lead in a social circle.
Also, she was most happily gifted with a talent for poetry, in relation to which her reputation was everywhere recognized; at the convent, she consulted her superiors as to the advisability of continuing her verse making; and upon being told that such occupation was not a means of winning the grace of Jesus Christ, she abandoned it.
Cousin maintained that the avowed principle of the Port-Royalists was the withdrawal from all worldly pleasure and attachment. ”'Marriage is a homicide; absolute renunciation is the true regime of a Christian.'
Jacqueline Pascal is an exaggeration of Port-Royal, and Port-Royal is an exaggeration of the religious spirit of the seventeenth century.
Man is too little considered; all movement of the physical world comes from G.o.d; all our acts and thoughts, except those of crime and error, come from and belong to Him. Nothing is our own; there is no free will; will and reason have no power. The theory of grace is the source of all truth, virtue, and merit--and for this doctrine Jacqueline Pascal gives up her life.”
Among the great spirits of Port-Royal, the women especially were strong in their convictions and high in their ideals. They naturally followed the ideas of man and naturally fell into religious errors; but their firmness, constancy, and heroism were striking indeed. Their aspiration was the imitation of Christ, and they approached their model as near as ever was done by man. In an age of courtesans, when convictions were subservient to the pleasure of power, they set a worthy example of strength of mind, firmness of will, purity, and womanliness. M. du Bled says:
”Port-Royal was the enterprise of the middle-cla.s.s aristocracy of France; you can see here an antic.i.p.ated attempt of a sort of superior third estate to govern for itself in the Church and to establish a religion not Roman, not aristocratic and of the court, not devout in the manner of the simple people, but freer from vain images and ceremonies, and freer, also, as to the temporal in the face of worldly authority--a sober, austere, independent religion which would have truly founded a Gallican reform. The illusion was in thinking that they could continue to exist in Rome--that Richelieu and Louis XIV.
would tolerate the boldness of this attempt.”
A celebrated woman of the seventeenth century, one who really belongs to the circle of Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de La Fayette, but who early in life, like Mme. de Longueville, devoted herself to religion and retired to live at Port-Royal, and is therefore more intimately a.s.sociated with the religious movement, was Mme. de Sable, a type of the social-religious woman.
Mme. de Sable is a heroine of Cousin, whom we closely follow in this account of her career. According to that writer, she is a type of the purely social woman, a woman who did less for herself than for others, in aiding whom she took delight, a woman who was the inspiration of many writers and many works.
Mlle. de Souvre married the wealthy Marquis of Sable, of the house of Montmorency, of whom little is known. He soon abandoned her; and she, most unhappy over unworthy rivals, fell very ill, retired from society for a time, and then reappeared; her career as a society woman then began. At an early age, by force of her decided taste for the high form of Spanish gallantry, then so much in vogue, and her inclination to all things intellectual, she became one of the leaders of the Hotel de Rambouillet. She, Mmes. de Sevigne, de Longueville, and de La Fayette formed that circle of women who idealized friends.h.i.+p.
Within a few years she lost her father, husband, two of her brothers, and her second son; and after putting her financial affairs into order, she and her friend, the Countess of Maure, took up their quarters at the famous Place Royale; there they decided to devote their lives to letters, and there a.s.sembled their friends, men and women, regardless of rank or party, personal merit being the only means of access. Mmes. de Sable and de Rambouillet were called the arbiters of elegance and good taste.
To her friends, Mme. de Sable was always accommodating and showed no partiality; well informed, she was constantly approached for counsel and favors; discreet and trustworthy, the most important secrets were intrusted to her--a confidence which she never betrayed. During the Fronde she remained faithful to the queen and Mazarin, but did not become estranged from her friends, so many of whom were Frondists, and who chose her as their counsellor, arbitrator, and pacifier.
About 1655 she began to realize her unsettled position in the world and to long for a place where she might, modestly and becomingly, spend her declining years. She was then fifty-five years of age. The ideas of Jansenism had so impressed the great people of the day, that she decided to retire to Port-Royal, to end her days with sympathizers of the spiritual life around her and her former friends whenever she desired them. There she gathered about her the most exclusive and aristocratic people of the day: La Rochefoucauld, the Prince and Princess of Conti, Conde, Monsieur,--brother of Louis XIV.,--Mme. de La Fayette, Mme. de Hautefort, and others.
At her apartments, not only were religious and literary affairs discussed, but the most delicate and delicious dishes were prepared and elixirs and remedies for disease compounded. Famous people were led to seek her, through her reputation and influence, and through friends.h.i.+p, for she seldom left her house. Mme. de Sable possessed all the qualities that attract and hold, nothing extraordinary or rare, but abundant politeness and elegance.
It was not long before she began to withdraw from even her friends, still continuing, however, her fine cuisine, the remarkable care of her health, and her medical experiments. Her dinners became celebrated, and invitations to them were much in demand; about them there were no signs of opulence, but her gatherings were distinguished for refinement and taste. Her friends were constantly asking her for her recipes, of the preparation of which no one but herself knew the secret.
At the salon of Mme. de Sable originated many famous literary works, such as the _Conferences sur le Calvinisme_, works on Cartesian philosophy, the _Logique de Port-Royal_, _Questions sur l'Amour_, _Les Maximes_, etc. She will be remembered as the initiator of many maxims, in the composition of which she excelled. A number of her sayings concerning friends.h.i.+p have been preserved. Two treatises, in the form of maxims, on the education of children and on friends.h.i.+p, respectively, are supposed to have come from her pen; from them La Rochefoucauld conceived the ideas he utilized in his famous _Maxims_.
La Rochefoucauld's maxims were composed according to the chance of conversation, which gave rise to various subjects and led to his serious reflection upon them. Cousin even goes so far as to say that the _Pensees_ of Pascal would never have been published in that form had not the _Maxims_ enjoyed such favor. Pascal often visited Port-Royal and naturally followed the general reflective tendency of its society. His _Discours sur les Pa.s.sions de l'Amour_ possibly originated at the salon of Mme. de Sable, because the subject of which that work treated was one much discussed there. La Rochefoucauld was in the habit of sending his maxims to Mme. de Sable with the message: ”As you do nothing for nothing, I ask of you a carrot soup or mutton stew.”
When La Rochefoucauld entered the society of Mme. de Sable, he had seen much of life, was familiar with most of the adventures and intrigues of the Fronde and the society of the time; he himself had acted his part in all, and at the age of fifty was ready to put his experience into a permanent form of reflection. His _Maxims_ created a stir, through the clearness and elegance of their character, their fine a.n.a.lyses of man as he was in the seventeenth century, and through their truthfulness and general applicability to men of every country.
From all the ill.u.s.trious women of the day, either he or Mme. de Sable received letters of criticism or suggestion--eulogies and condemnations of which he took notice in his next edition. This shows the intense interest felt in the appearance of any new literary production.
Cousin says that the whole literature of maxims and reflections issued directly from the salon of a kind and good woman who had retired to a convent with no other desire than to live over her life, to recall her past and what she had seen and felt therein; and upon her society, that woman impressed her own tastes, elegance, and seriousness. Her great act of benevolence was her protection of Port-Royal. When, after the death in 1661 of Mother Angelique Arnauld, that inst.i.tution became the object of persecution and its tenants were either imprisoned or compelled to seek refuge in the various families of Paris, Mme. de Sable remained faithful to its principles; she lived with her friends, Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de Montausier, until 1669, when, with the cooperation of Mme. de Longueville, who exerted all her influence for Port-Royal, she finally succeeded in bringing about its reopening. At least, Cousin ascribes this result to Mme. de Sable, but he may have somewhat exaggerated her influence in this respect. From her retreat at Port-Royal, she kept up a constant correspondence with her friends all over France; she lived there until 1678, with but one intimate friend, Mme. de Longueville.
Mme. de Sable had remarkable gifts; her mission in politics, religion, and literature seems to have been to excite to action, to stimulate and to bring out to its fullest value, the talents and genius of others. In her modest salon, she inspired the great and ill.u.s.trious work which will keep her memory alive as long as the _Maxims_ and _Pensees_ are read. Her name will be connected with that of Mme.
de Longueville, because of their ideal friends.h.i.+p, and with that of Port-Royal because of her ardent and self-sacrificing support of it in the time of its direst persecution, when any exhibition of sympathy was dangerous in the extreme; and finally, her name will always be connected with that small circle of French society of the seventeenth century, which was n.o.ble, moral, and elevating to an unusual degree.
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